A Sense of Balance

A Sense of Balance

(Republished. Original one published on LinkedIn dated July 2015)

 I have been contemplating about work-life balance for many years during my career and whether there is a really something called work-life balance; or it is some phrase used by different people in different roles they perform in their organization; or at an individual capacity to suit their needs of the moment to vent against whatever has been bothering them in their work or life. I have been thinking about blogging about this for a long time and got a flow one late night sitting with my sleeplessness which is nothing uncommon now-a-days. But be warned – this isn’t supposed to be a research work or a report, but I have tried to structure the thoughts in a readable and logical manner as much as possible. All comments are welcome!

 Most people who aspire for a certain career in specific industry, and more so specifically in the IT industry, including myself have enthusiastically waited to on-board into the working life moving away from the college/university phase. There has been, at least in the Indian context, to move quickly into a job with a great feeling to showcase the knowledge and talent that had been built for over so many years of formal education. The enthusiasm and momentum each one brings to excel in the work coupled with other aspects like traveling, adapting to a changing lifestyle and of course lot of money brings in a certain work schedule – a flexible work schedule. This has brought in a lot of advantages to the work and organization in terms of increasing productivity, minimal and flexible people management aspects (relatively speaking to the other industries and times, where unionized ways of management exist; other bureaucratic ways) and a creation of aspiring lifestyle based job market. IT industry, to my knowledge have utilized this as a key market criteria for growth in India by bringing more business to offshore and thereby creating a new paradigm of global business currently. As we have been seeing, it has warped the software industry to the extent that now it has impacted global economy and other industries as well; since companies are look to emerging markets where now substantial spending power lies to grow their business.

 This flexible work culture has thus seen a drastic change in the lifestyle and has not only impacted IT workforce, but also other industries. My view, one could say is seen mostly from the Indian perspective. I am not sure if other western countries, which has been the source of most of the software business for Indian companies, had this culture already running in its soil, in its own era and the offshoring bridge worked on a mutually beneficial way - one exported its people’s brains and another probably its culture. Whatever – now it’s history.

 Returning to the topic on work-life balance, there is an implicit expression of the underlying imbalance in people’s lives through an explicitly visible symptoms. In my experience it is not work itself that causes this imbalance. I have at earlier times in other private forums and posts elsewhere referred to the phrase ‘work-life balance’ as ‘work - balances - life’. Because the former phrase seems to indicate two aspects to be balanced – ‘work’ and ‘life’ – as if work is separate from life and life without work is all there is in life and confining ‘work’ to the ‘job work’. But the later phrase is more appropriate because life consists of job work , family, friends, higher education, other ambitions, hobbies, aspirations, voluntary work, etc. and work actually helps in balancing life. It is another component that is vital to the balance of life.If so, what has caused it and the symptoms to appear? First let’s try to list down the possible signs that could be symptoms of the imbalance.

 Some of these might have changed over the years or scaled up or down or transformed into something else. My judgements could be wrong as well, but the point I would like to draw intuitively is that work itself doesn’t cause imbalance. I remember reading one of the interviews of Mr. Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys, where he responds to a question on work-life balance – “Let us get the work first and then talk of work-life balance.” In the context of the interview at that time, when business was slowing down, I took it as to get the business to continue to create more jobs. So logically without work there is no talk of balance. Looking at the other way, his response seems to have ignored the existing employees work conditions. But I observed, as I was moving with these cultural changes in my own pace to the flexible but stretched work schedule, work itself didn’t cause me imbalance, but rather helped me in the changing times to balance all aspects of life. Most of the environmental factors or parameters of the work schedule definitely have an impact on the balance.

What is this intangible balance then we seemed to have lost, and we see its symptoms in different hues and colours. I think it is about giving equal importance to all aspects required for one’s life. You ignore one, you could be in peril. And it starts with a sense of missing something – the when -depending on aspiration of each person’s importance to keeping one’s life in balance itself. Please note that I meant ‘equal importance’ – not ‘equal time’. It took time for me to understand this difference, because the later (‘equal time’) need not lead one to balance. There were times, when I tried to keep my work schedule within 8 to 5 or 9 to 6, and it did not lead me to where I wanted to be in my work aspiration. It seemed too late, until I realized ‘stretching’ in work time does not necessarily mean ‘over working’ or working more hours. The ‘flexible work’ schedule had already changed to a new work culture and I was probably behind it too. There were also times when spending more time with my family for instance did not lead to where I thought it would lead to – a happy family. It is through such experience, which I believe most have gone through and is nothing new, that I learnt what balance is. And balance is dynamic too. A cyclist starts to learn balance by turning right and left, falling many times. But can he/she be said to be in balance when he is not moving? Balance is associated with dynamism of the factors associated with one’s movement. So it is not work that causes balance. In fact it can help one being in balanced if one knows how to handle it. It is important to seek balance. This seeking creates an observable set of factors associated with that which we are trying to balance and taking personal actions to move towards a balanced state. I have also observed that clarity in thought is important to correctly analyse and take action, and that the clarity can come by many means – including trial and error!

               What could team member, project manager or senior management, organization do to bring this balance into its employees? We have seen our colleagues in HR work hard to bring some of the elements designed to bring in ‘work-life’ balance for the employees to feel more comfortable. But I believe it may not be effective or sometimes even a useless exercise because of an underlying paradigm. More on this sometime later.

Thank you for reading in till here, have a good day with a dose of balance! :-)
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